Saturday, June 15, 2013

What I Learned This Week: Shakespearean One-Liners

Over dinner the other night, our friend Becky dismissed an absent presence as "fit to be sent on errands."

Cute, said I.  Where'd you get it.

Oh, Shakespeare, said Becky.

I don't believe you, said I, and I am pretty good at my Shakespeare one-liners.  

But a brief house call from Dr. Google demonstrated that she was correct. It is indeed Shakespeare, and not just Shakespeare--it is Marc Antony, colluding with his co-triumvir Octavian to determine who shall live, who shall die in the maelstrom that follows Caesar's assassination.  And not just Antony but Antony completely in character, with his jokey cruelty and his preening contempt for a supposed ally. For it is this Antony who has just dispatched Lepidus, the supposed third of the triumvirs, to fetch Caesar's will:
This is a slight unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands.

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